Contents of the DTST.DOC file

DTST is a small utility that is used to check out your hard disks. Ithas the special ability to report "slow" sectors. These are sectorsthat read properly, but often require retries. I feel that such sectorsare on the verge of failure and should quickly be locked out before theycause any harm.

DTST consults your FAT and reports if clusters are already marked bad.You can use another disk utility (such as Norton's NU) to locate anyfiles using the questionable sectors. Copy the files to a safe placeand then use "DT" to mark the blocks as "bad". This will prevent realtrouble before it happens.

Use this at your own risk! I am including source code so you can verifythat it has not been hacked.

Samuel H. Smith The Tool Shop (602) 279-2673

Revision history----------------

15-feb-88 v1.0 Initial coding and release.

21-feb-88 v1.1 Added two optional parameters to specify the first and last sector number to test.

23-may-88 v1.3 Fixed the 'slow sector' message, which was broken in the 21-may version. Also reduced display activity during testing.

16-jun-88 v1.4 The FAT is now loaded to determine clusters which are already marked as bad. Added READ/WRITE test. Initial SourceWare release.

26-jun-88 v1.5 Directed the non-error track by track status messages to the display regardless of where standard output has been redirected. This removes clutter from a logfile if you are running DTST in a batch with output redirected to a file.

01-may-90 v2.0 Added support for DOS 4.0 and partitions over 32meg. Added additional error messages when a disk failure is detected.